Averaging and Zeroes

http://www.teachertube.com/view_video.php?viewkey=dbd43d54b1307129474f

This is a clip of Dr. Douglas Reeves speaking to a Canadian audience about what he calls "toxic" grading practices. Reeves is the author of more than 25 books and countless articles on education.

In the clip Reeves talks about zeroes and averaging. We showed this clip to our high school faculty and there were wide ranging responses:

• Students deserve the average because this helps differentiate the steady performing student from the student that does poorly all the time but well at the end.
• Students are a sum of all of their performances so the average is the correct score for them.
• Zeroes are an essential part of grading.
• I want students to see zeroes and I want them to be calculated in the grade.

Here I want to clarify and expand upon some of what Dr. Reeves was getting at. First in the case of the average.

While in the clip he states provocatively that all averaging must go, what he and other researchers have been preaching for the past decade is to end a mindless devotion to the average as the only way of evaluating students. In fact the average might be the right score for a given student. I, along with Reeves and other researchers, am arguing that the average is not the best evaluation for all students.

It comes back as always to a conversation about standards. Is our goal to get them to the standard (in our parlance competency)? If we work hard as teachers and students work hard at learning and understanding and they make it to the standard what should the grade represent? Why should it be the average in this case? If everyone can meet the standard at the end but then we average scores it not only hurts students but it hurts us. The scores are a poor representation of how we operated as teachers. Grading is always a subjective process. As professionals we strive to minimize the subjectivity but we cannot eliminate it. As professionally trained practitioners we should allow ourselves to award students the score, the evaluation, that most appropriately matches their ability.

As far as zeroes I have posted on this many times but take one more example.

• 100-40=A
• 39-30=B
• 29-20=C
• 19-10=D
• 9-0=F

When you present this example people say that is ridiculous! But this system is as mathematically unsound as the system where the top four categories are 10 or 11 points and the last category is 59 points. So this is the first argument against zeroes--it is simply mathematically unsound.

The second argument is that it does not increase motivation. And has been shown by Dr. Reeves to have a role in whether struggling students stay in school or leave. Zeroes motivate only one type of student--good ones, ones like teachers used to be when they were in the classroom. The students that we worry about the most are not motivated to do work by receiving a zero. To the contrary they are encouraged to give up because when zeros mount the combination of their extra mathematical weight and the increase in a feeling of hopelessness cause students to shut down.

I feel strongly that zeroes should not be used and the average should not be used in all cases. That said, if a teacher still wants to use zeroes and averages as the only way to go I would ask them to continue that practice only after reflecting on exactly why they want to do it that way. As professionals we will always evaluate in different ways--the question is: Is the way you reach the evaluation of a student the best representation of what they can do?

More on zeros

After a post on not using zeros in grading a reader questioned:

Just wondering if you've made any inroads with the administration or other teachers on this topic--particularly with regard to the after school policy.

Nearly 3 years after bringing the research on zeros to teachers there has a been a very good response to the idea. I wouldn't say that there has been a halt to the use of zeros but teachers are more conscious of why they might still give them.

The biggest progress has been made in the area of grading behavior. Teachers have quickly understood that there can be a difference between grading behavior and grading achievement v. a standard. The idea of not grading behavior or at least making it a separate grade has gained a lot of traction.

As far as the idea of a unified policy on staying after school for not turning in work--there is little progress. We are working so much on the things that come before a grading policy that we can all agree on that we won't be at this point for a while.

More on what a zero does to a grade

December 2007

A friend emailed me a PowerPoint created by Rick Wormeli that included some interesting ways of thinking about assigning zeroes. I've been discussing it for more than a year now but I really liked these two new (to me) takes on it.

The first one he called Imagine the Reverse. What if you did for A's what is currently done for F's.

100-40=A
39-30=B
29-20=C
19-10=D
9-0=F

Just look at it--no one in the world would go for it. Because we know what it would do to students--especially high achieving students. If we sent home report cards where everyone had an A and there were just a few F's parents would be outraged. (This brings up another post issue related to the Bell curve and students being trained by us to want to be separated into groups--the winners and the losers if you will--but that isn't for today.)

Another way of thinking about it would be to compare rubric scores to a 100 point scale. (Also from Rick Wormeli via Doug Reeves.)

4=100
3=90
2=80
1=70
0=60

There may be some disagreement on how these are assigned but it seems that thoughtful educators could agree that it at least makes logical sense. What if we continue the transition down to zero.

-1=50
-2=40
-3=30
-4=20
-5=10
-6=0

Wormeli, who I assume was paraphrasing Reeves, argues why would a teacher want to assigning such a low score for a zero. Doesn't zero mean that one is 6 times worse than the 60?

Yet another argument for thinking about the assignment of a zero for a grade. If it can be defended I suppose it can still be used, it just seems that the case for zero is getting weaker and weaker. Especially if the zero is being used as a punishment. Not turning in homework is a behavior so should be punished with a behavioral penalty not a grade penalty. As I have said before I am not telling anyone how to grade. But no one should grade or calculate grades without thinking about how they are doing it and why. At the end of the day the teacher (the expert in the subject) should know that the grade is a accurate and fair reflection of what a student is able to do.

Zeros

We believe that students should learn to accept responsibility and should be held accountable for their work. Nevertheless, we know of no evidence that shows assigning a zero helps teach students these lessons.

From Developing Grading and Reporting Systems by Tom Guskey and Jane Bailey.

This aspect of standards grading has been a tough one for me to get my mind around and is by far one of the toughest to sell to other teachers.

I had encountered this idea in passing before but it was not until I saw a complete presentation by Grant Wiggins, Ken O'Connor and Tom Guskey that it became clear to me that zeros were not the way to go. In my own teaching I had used zeros as motivational tools for 5 years. Or I should say that I thought I was using them as motivational tools. When students would not turn in an assignment I would give them a zero. My thinking, and the message that I conveyed to students was that they would see what the zero had done to their grade and they would be motivated to turn in the work. This rarely happened but I knew that I had to do something to them for their lack of work.

What Ken O'Connor explained in his presentation and in his book is that this does not motivate students. And it does not give a fair representation of what students can do. It is a grade of behavior not a grade of student understanding. It should be made clear that doing homework is an important aspect of being a student. Doing homework should be a behavior that is encouraged but it is not something that should be part of the grade.

And here I talk about the grade and the student ability as the same thing. Study habits, effort, doing homework are all indicators of success. As teachers we know they are important and that is why we encourage those habits in students. At the same time those types of student efforts are not measures of what they know and understand. For a long time a grade, a single letter or number, has been a measure of student ability and effort all combined together. I am suggesting that we move to an approach where we measure and report on all of these but we are clear to students and parents about which are student abilities and which are measures of student effort.

This year I have tried the following. I have firm due dates for all of my assignments. These due dates are published in my online grade book and on our class website.

1.The day assignments are due I collect them and grade them on whether the students know and understand the concept.

2. For those students that do not hand in homework I assign and incomplete. In the notes section of the online grade book I record that they have not turned the assignment in on time. A grade of incomplete immediately makes their total score, even if they have handed in everything else, an incomplete.

3. Three or four times in a nine week grading period I have all students with incompletes stay after school and either finish their work or come up with a plan to finish their work. If students skip this time I contact parents. And if parent contact does not help I enlist the help of their assistant principal or their guidance counselor.

Reflections so far

Grading students only on what they are able to do in relation to standards really makes it clear what a student can and cannot do. When I used to have zeros in the book for behaviors, (i.e. not turning in work), it would cloud the picture because measurements of their effort and measurements of their science abilities would all be mixed together. I have never had a more clear understanding of what my students actually know about science.

Having students, especially the students I teach, come in after school has always been a challenge. I have had limited success with students coming in after school on the designated incomplete days. Mainly I have had to spend a lot of time emailing parents and nagging students before I finally received the work that I wanted to grade. All of this behavior gets noted and is included in their progress report but it can be a lot of work. Grant Wiggins and Ken O'Connor suggest school wide policies where students always have to stay after school if they have not turned in work. They said that they have seen this approach work that way but not when individual teachers do it alone. So far my findings confirm their statements.

Even with the difficulty I still find the work worth it. The clear knowledge that I get of what students know about science is worth the time I have put in.